[sorry if this has been discussed before, but I don't remember anything conclusive coming from this topic]

Okay, so I want to back up all my MP3's and get them off my PC. I'll still want them in a safe place, though, since I can't easily get them off the empeg (and what if my empeg crashes?).

So there's a few ways I could do it.
1) CD's
2) extra hard drive
3) some other media storage

1) ~700 MB a disc for 13 GB of MP3's? no thanks.
2) I don't think so

3) I've been looking into DVD RAM drives. I've been looking at Hitachi's drives, but they're not very easy to find. I'm looking at their GF-2000 model. Here's info on the various drives:

http://www.hitachi.com/storage/products/dvd/specs/gf-2000dvd.html

http://www.hitachi.com/storage/products/dvd/dvdframe.html

I'm liking this option for future purposes, like storing captured video in less compressed file types (so I don't have to wait while WMP decides a WMV file that I compressed the hell out of).

So what does everyone think? I've kinda found the drives on Pricewatch (just SCSI, though, which I can't use), but they're not cheap or anything. Anyone know what place would be best for this?

Thanks!

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

I have been thinking about this also. When I get around to it my plan was an 80gig IDE drive. There is an IBM one that apparently runs nice and quiet and I have been keeping an eye on UK prices here .


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Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/No.341 2xDell RioReceiver

1) ~700 MB a disc for 13 GB of MP3's? no thanks.

20 CDRs? £20 can't be beaten as a price point here, and it's not like you back the whole lot up every day.

2) I don't think so

IDE disc + removable caddy thing = not all that much money. If you're worried about the IDE disc itself not being reliable -- buy two! buy three! It's still cheaper than a DAT streamer.

3) some other media storage

I use a DAT streamer, on the basis that CDRs are fragile, DVD-RAMs have unknown ultra-long-term reliability, and Travan and VXA might disappear tomorrow. DAT is not disappearing anytime soon. Read the Digital Dark Ages chapter of The Clock Of The Long Now in order to get worried (it used to be available on http://www.longnow.org but doesn't seem to be there now).

Peter

Thanks for the replies, they're helpful. However:

1) yes, 20 or so CDR's would be incredibly cheap to do, but what a pain. I don't feel like marking what's on each CD either. Plus, CDR's won't be big enough if I want to put a large video file in storage.

2) I've always liked the idea of the removeable HDD. Problem is, I don't have an extra drive bay to do it. I'll need a solution that will let me keep my current functionality and just add to it.

3) DVDRAM is looking most attractive to me because of the high capacity and that I'll just replace my current DVD drive with it. I know the price is steep, but in the long run of storage, I'll want it.

I currently have 13GB of MP3's, about 8GB of music videos, and I don't know how much of other large files. Right now they're taking up space and will do me just as much good if they're in storage on a disc somewhere.

the ultra-long-term? What does that mean? like 45 years?

DiGNAN
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, etc.

There are some pretty cheap tape backup options available these days. The problem is the capacity. Remember that tape drives usually report compressed capacity, and your MP3s are already compressed. For instance, if they say the tape drive will hold 10 gigs, they probably mean that the tape actually has 5 gigs of space.

Here at work, we use DLT backup drives because DAT drives were terribly unreliable at best. But that technology is going to be a little too expensive just for backing up your empeg.

Some things to consider:

1) If you still have the original CDs you ripped the songs from, you can consider that you don't need to bother backing them up at all since you could simply re-rip them in the event of a disaster. Your only trade-off is time/effort there. In that case, you might consider only backing up your downloaded/pirated MP3s. For some people, this is only a small fraction of their collection and would fit on a single CD-R.

2) If your collection isn't going to change in the near future, then CD-Rs, although a hassle, might be your most cost-effective method. A bit of a hassle, but certainly cheaper than buying a tape or another disk drive. The only advantage of tape/disk storage is that it can be easily updated when your collection changes. CD-Rs would be permanent.

___________
Tony Fabris

With IDE 80-100Gb drives readily available under $300 -- Dell recently had a special sale where I grabbed an 80Gb drive for $160 -- this seems like the cheapest and most flexible "backup", IMHO. (Best: Put a RAID together, a la Promise card.)

That said, I've had an Ecrix VXA drive for 18mos -- it stores 33Gb on a $70 tape, and seemed reasonable at the $499 discounted entry price. It hasn't really let me down so far, though throughput seems slow on my aging PII/300.

Agreed that DVD variants are promising, however... I'm not too familiar with these products, but check out the Pioneer drives coming out (also licensed by Apple).

______________
Empeg Mk. 2 #626, 18Gb blue | Kenwood KMD-X92. 2000 VW Passat wagon.

If you still have the original CDs you ripped the songs from...

Of course, you'll want to re-encode everything using MP3Pro at some point in the future, anyway, and you'll have to do that from the originals. So why bother backing them up at all?

(I have considered archiving the WAV files to tape for just this reason)

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

I have considered archiving the WAV files to tape for just this reason

Same here, except my plan is to use FLAC.

Borislav

We use Ecrix drives at empeg - we have one on our mail/etc server, fatboy (used to be our compile server but is now too slow) and an ecrix autoloader on aphex. I've never had so little hassle from a tape drive - it just works.

That said, our autoloader isn't working atm as it needs a firmware upgrade, but ecrix support is good and they're sending out an upgrade (on tape) for the autoloader mechanism.

Hugo

Here at work, we use DLT backup drives because DAT drives were terribly unreliable at best. But that technology is going to be a little too expensive just for backing up your empeg.

Just search eBay, and a rare deal is bound to show up. I grabbed an external 15/30 DLT and 8 10GB tapes for $250. I know the guy probably didn't know what he had, or was liquidating things as the 15/30 drives are still really expensive.

Now if I could just find a cheap SDLT. (110gb native storage, up to 220 compressed)

There are some pretty cheap tape backup options available these days.

Tape backups are cheap only if you don't value your time and your convenience and if you are prepared to accept limited reliability from the medium itself.

Tapes that are used frequently wear out. Depending on what software you are using, you can have a five-tape set that is good for nothing but a paperweight if you have a single corrupted byte in the wrong place on the tape.

Tapes are serial access only. If you want to recover a single file from a tape, you can spend upwards of an hour just finding it if your tapes are big enough and densely packed enough.

I just yesterday purchased a 60 GB hard drive that will go inside my computer and be used for nothing but backup purposes. Total cost? $129. Whenever the mood hits me, I will just mirror my C: drive to that backup drive -- probably won't take more than half an hour to do it. I have full, fast, random access to every backup file, and pretty good reliability. Unless both my C: drive and my backup drive were to fail simultaneously, I am at no risk of ever losing data.

I suppose if you were archiving terrabytes of data and never anticipated having to retrieve any of it, a tape drive might make sense. But for my limited purposes, a single "spare" hard drive seems the best.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

In reply to:

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Remember that tape drives usually report compressed capacity, and your MP3s are already compressed. For instance, if they say the tape drive will hold 10 gigs, they probably mean that the tape actually has 5 gigs of space.

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I have found that with compression on, my 35/70Gb DLT drive stores about 31Gb of MP3s per tape and with compression off, it stores 35Gb. The compression must have some sort of overhead which, in the case of MP3s, increases the file size. Backing up of already compressed files is noticably slower if drive compression is enabled too.

Nicholas.


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18GB red s/n 080000299, original pos'n 8724. Reproduction of this post is not permitted.

DAT drive unreliable.. wow.. i have NEVER EVER had a sony dat or tape fail. on 10 drives and hundreds of tapes.

In reply to:

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I have found that with compression on, my 35/70Gb DLT drive stores about 31Gb of MP3s per tape and with compression off, it stores 35Gb. The compression must have some sort of overhead which, in the case of MP3s, increases the file size. Backing up of already compressed files is noticably slower if drive compression is enabled too.

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All Hardware compression on tape drives tends to do this. If you send it compressed data, it will enlarge the dataset. Software compression in tape drive backups is always going to do a better job, if for no other reason than the fact that the compressor on the computer is going to have access to more data to work with, and more advanced code.

I honestly don't know WHY hardware compression is even included anymore... It's the first thing I turn off.

Of many tape formats I have used over the years (from 2400" 800 bpi NRZI 9 track reel-to-reel on) DAT and 8mm drives did prove to be the most temperamental (e.g. the drive would claim it needed cleaning two tapes after being cleaned, or would refuse to surrender the medium it has swallowed etc), but once the read-after-write drive wrote the tape and claimed it OK, it generally really was OK. Having said that, they cannot compare to old 9 track drives or, even less, disks.

Tape backup is generally really not intended to be read, meaning it is there just for disaster recovery. That's why I don't consider speed of access (or lack of it) very important: if your hard drive dies, you just recover all of its content from the tape backup.

However, given tape's far from total reliability, one has to advise backup strategy where there will almost always ba a way to bypass a bad tape (e.g. keeping three most recent total, baseline backups and all incremental backups between them, keeping a copy of recent incremental backups on a separate medium, doing fresh baseline backup whenever major or important change happens). OTOH, a decade of administering (among other things) other people's massive databases and their backup has probably made me too paranoid .

Considering using disk as backup: it is just too hard for me not to swamp it with garbage. My files really do expand to fill all the available space (on my home computers, anyway) .

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

DAT and 8mm drives did prove to be the most temperamental (e.g. the drive would claim it needed cleaning two tapes after being cleaned, or would refuse to surrender the medium it has swallowed etc)

Exactly the problems I was having, with two different brands of drives and all different brands of media.

Of course, we used the DAT drives in such a way that they would back up all night every night, so perhaps we were exceeding their duty cycle. But what's the point of a tape drive if you can't back up every night?

one has to advise backup strategy where there will almost always ba a way to bypass a bad tape

Of course. In our organization, we grandfather ten sets of DLTs. So that at any one time, we can instantly go back to any tape from the last ten days. (And this is just our on-site backups. We also have a set of monthly off-sites.)


(e.g. keeping three most recent total, baseline backups and all incremental backups between them, keeping a copy of recent incremental backups on a separate medium, doing fresh baseline backup whenever major or important change happens).

SCREW THAT. Too much organizational overhead. When disaster strikes, you're never quite sure which tape contains which data. I simply do a full file-by-file backup of everything every night onto one tape. I pencil the date on that tape. The next night, I use the next tape. Simple.

When somebody comes to me and asks to have a file restored, all I need from them is the file name and the date. I find the tape with that date, stick the tape in, grab the file, and I'm done.

Sure, incremental backups allow the backups to finish quicker, but the simplicity and ease of recovery, to me, is worth the extra time and expense of full backups.

And the DLT drives/tapes we're using can handle it, both in terms of duty cycle and capacity. They have been dead-reliable for years now.

The only drawback is that after about a year's worth of over-and-over uses, a given DLT cartridge will need to be replaced. I just wait until a given cartridge reports an error, then I swap a new one in its place.

___________
Tony Fabris

SCREW THAT. Too much organizational overhead. When disaster strikes, you're never quite sure which tape contains which data. I simply do a full file-by-file backup of everything every night onto one tape. I pencil the date on that tape. The next night, I use the next tape. Simple.

Nooo! The proper way (TM) is to have your tapes numbered, and date (and any other appropriate data) for a particular tape written in the Little Red Notebook (R). That way you don't end up with 30 different dates written, half-erased and overwritten on a tiny label.

When somebody comes to me and asks to have a file restored, all I need from them is the file name and the date. I find the tape with that date, stick the tape in, grab the file, and I'm done.

Sure, incremental backups allow the backups to finish quicker, but the simplicity and ease of recovery, to me, is worth the extra time and expense of full backups.

And the DLT drives/tapes we're using can handle it, both in terms of duty cycle and capacity. They have been dead-reliable for years now.

The only drawback is that after about a year's worth of over-and-over uses, a given DLT cartridge will need to be replaced. I just wait until a given cartridge reports an error, then I swap a new one in its place.

OK, my experiance is mostly from banking transactional database backup, where one cannot afford to loose a single transaction and logs go continuously to tapes. Typical fileservers are backed up the way you describe.

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

With my method, you don't need a little red notebook at all, and there are never any problems where you have transcription errors in the notebook. And I write the dates sequentially on the labels, they're never half-written or half-erased.

You're right, the servers I'm backing up are typical file servers. The logs do not go continuously to tapes in my case. It's adequate for us to simply have nightly backups.

___________
Tony Fabris

If the backup took all night on a DAT, this means it will have been reversing, repositioning, writing, repeat. This is very bad for tape and head wear.

The ecrix drives have a much better idea. The tape speed is not fixed, and it monitors buffer level and will run the tape faster when the data rate demands it. This means there's very little rewind/repositioning, with the corresponding improvement in tape wear and backup speed.

Hugo

Depending on what software you are using, you can have a five-tape set that is good for nothing but a paperweight if you have a single corrupted byte in the wrong place on the tape.

Not with DLT. There are several things done on DLT to ensure that errors like this are recoverable. It's all done in hardware automaticially, so even if "tar /dev/tape" is being used, data can be recovered.

DLT also has a minimum shelf life of around 30 years if I remember right.

It's also damn quick. Seek times aren't bad at all, and recovering a single file is no problem.

Of course you pay for all these nice things in DLT though.

And I write the dates sequentially on the labels, they're never half-written or half-erased.

Doesn't work with my handwirting. Barely did with 2400" reel-to-reel tapes with pockets where one can insert a business-card sized label


Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

DLT medium is physically similar to ancient DEC tapes (not DECtapes - RT50 or something). Is there a lineage or is it just a conincidence?

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Is there a lineage or is it just a conincidence?

I'm not sure on this one. It could be why Digital was so interested in DLT drives, and why Compaq still pushes them quite a bit.

I don't think that DAT was really developed for data backup, as the name is Digital Audio Tape, and is therefore better at streaming in long stripes. If you look at professional Dat recorders they cost ~$10,000 for a studio model. These machines handle the tape in a fashion that can support shuttling without exessive wear. consider the cost of the transport mech in a $1000 backup system and it is REALLY inferior.
Yes i know there are field recorders cheaper and smaller than the 5 1/4" data models, but they dont do shuttling. Things like DLT were developed for the express purpose of data backup and retrieval. If I had the money, (yeah right!) Id go that way if I was so concerned about it.

If you use DATs and they work for you, you obviously have a system and practice that is suited to them. I don't have anything against data DATs, but I use mine for audio. Or I would if I didn't have an empeg!

Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.

In reply to:

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DLT medium is physically similar to ancient DEC tapes (not DECtapes - RT50 or something). Is there a lineage or is it just a conincidence?

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Ding, ding, ding, ding! Give that man a kewpie doll! Quantum bought the technology that would become DLT from Dec.

=-C

______________________________________
Queue 351, Now Mk II #60000022 18gb, Blue

Fascinating history lesson!

The DLT drives are essentially a little reel-to-reel system (very little tape deflection- the tape is not overstressed) in a cartride format.

___________
Tony Fabris

In reply to:

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DLT medium is physically similar to ancient DEC tapes (not DECtapes - RT50 or something)

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Ah yes. The 90Mb capacity TK50. I've still got a couple of TK50 drives (which go with my couple of MicroVAX 2000 machines). DLT (CompacTape IV) cartridges look exactly the same as TK50 (CompacTape I) cartridges.

Nicholas.


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18GB red s/n 080000299, original pos'n 8724. Reproduction of this post is not permitted.

Actually, DAT was developed for data backup, concurrently with the audio use. This is why things like filemarks only take up 4 bytes of tape space, as opposed to something like 100k on 8mm exabytes.

I did see a discussion somewhere about 8mm being very bad design-wise due to tape pinch angles or something technical like that, and DAT was much better thought out - also 8mm was originally just for analogue video (with PCM audio), data only came along with exabytes.

Yes, my DATs are very rarely used now, but a TCD-D3 was what I used to use in the miata before the mp3mobile ;)

Hugo

I stand corrected then, I'll withdraw myself into my sock. don't try this at home kids, I'm at work so i can get compo if something goes wrong. urr, little help?

I have had mixed success with DAT in backup, rare problems with DAT in audio and no problems with DLT.
Just for the Record.

Murray 06000047
I don't think, therefore I am not.